The β-factor: measuring wireless link burstiness

ABSTRACT

Measuring 802.15.4 reception in three testbeds, we find that most intermediate links are bursty: they shift between poor and good delivery. We present a metric to measure this link burstiness and name it β. We find that link burstiness affects protocol performance and that β can predict the effects. We show that measuring β allows us to reason about how long a protocol should pause after encountering a packet failure to reduce its transmission cost. We find that using β as a guide to setting a single constant in a standard sensor network data collection protocol reduces its average transmission cost by 15%. In addition to data from 802.15.4 testbeds, we examine traces from 802.11b networks and find β has a broader relevance in the wireless domain.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Wireless communication

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
802.15.4, low power wireless networks, wireless measurement study, wireless protocol design